Yes, they can. And no matter how much you try to prove you can't, they can still charge you for noncompliance to their orders. It's called contempt of court, and the judge can make you rot in a cell until you do comply. No jury, no bail, no nothing.
Contact your airline(s) and tell them you've stopped flying because of the TSA's overreaching search policies. The Feds will listen when the airlines squawk.
Yup, they'll listen alright. Then they'll cut the airlines another bailout check. Problem solved.
I think we should be trying to stay under 6,000 United States citizens dying from terrorism every year. It is the acceptable rate, to me, in terms of the risk of my acquaintances dying. Any significant spending we do to get under that number is -- to me -- emotionalism, not rationalism. Given we haven't reached 6,000 in the past 20 years, I suspect we are spending too much.
Main reason we're in this mess is 4,000 people died in 1 day and the media whipped the public into 'doing something' cause those terrorrorrorrists were comin for the rest of us next. It was big, it was visible, it was showy, and the media made a ton of money cause everybody was glued to their seats waiting for the other shoe to drop. Reminds me about all the scare FUD they spread about 'dirty bombs' (Hint: dirty bombs are a waste of time. For them to be truly effective, they'd have to cast your feet into cement and keep you there 4 or 5 years before the radiation had a chance to kill you. Oh, and it can't rain anytime in those 4 or 5 years).
How do you stop a takeover? While they could have told the airplane manufacturers to redesign the planes so that cockpits cannot be physically entered from the fuselage, they didn't. Last time I flew, about 4 years ago, from Vegas to Cleveland, the cockpit door wasn't closed until after takeoff. Now, hijacking's been a known problem for decades, hell, they used to hijack American planes to Cuba almost on a daily basis, but nobody ever seriously considered giving the cockpit its own outside hatch and putting a hardened steel bulkhead between it and the passenger area. Add in some teargas/sleep gas cannisters fireable only from the cockpit, and problem solved. Just make sure the flight attendants know if somebody pulls a weapon back there, they're on their own. They could have done this in the 70's. They didn't. Who do we sue?
Relax, it's an election year. Susan is just trying to act like she really gives a shit to her constituents. They slamdunk this one through, it's damned good sound bytes on their re-election campaign ads: "We thought of the children!!" On Nov 7th, nobody will give a fuck anymore and this will just go away to be resurrected in 2014.
They break it up into little pieces Manhattan Project style and bury it under a zillion tons of paperwork, even the project bosses won't be able to figure out what's going on.
They're required to give equal access to polis. Doesn't mean any ads they run are for free. Parties are supposed to buy airtime just like everybody else.
Vega is a fucking space ghetto. I don't want to point to that part of the celestial neighborhood.
I thought that was where the Mother Thing was from? Doesn't sound like a ghetto... Wormface and company were from the ghetto.
Problem is, what comes from Vega are Vegans. If they invade, no more leather, no more steaks. We'll be reduced to eating vegetables and tofu forever and ever and ever, amen
Course, the upside is, we'll produce plenty of methane, so it might help with the energy crunch, though I kinda doubt it'll be comfortable walking around with a gas pipe up my ass. Maybe that's why the aliens are so into anal probing...
As for North Korea.. pfft. There's probably only one cell phone in the country and it's in the hands of Dear Chubby and absolutely no Star Bucks.
Yeah, that'd be ample reason to invade them. Gotta be a bigtime market there for cheap throwaway cell phones, overpriced coffee and all the rest of the 'benefits' of 'civilisation'. They find any oil under Pyongyang yet?
They only support "artist interests" when it suits their profit motive. The same is true for their support of copyright.
The only 'artistry' the media companies are interested in is the artistry needed to hide profits from the artists themselves. You don't really think all that money goes to rock stars, do you?
I got the chance to look over a 'standard starup contract' for a new band a few years back. Yeah, they got a $30,000 advance, on 3 albums. The fine print said, they had to use the label's recording studio at the usual rate, plus the label's engineers & techs, also at the usual rate. The label wiould supply the producer, paid for by the band at the producer's usual rate. Advertising and promotion would be provided by the label and paid for by the band at the label's usual rate. And so on and so forth. All of this was supposed to come out of the band's share of the profits before they got paid a dime. Oh, they also had to pay back that $30,000 advance before they saw any money. And they only got a small percentage of the profits.
I remember a commercial for a tax service that aired about 3 years ago where one guy played a musician and said "I made 250,000 last year. If I do that good this year, I might break even!'.
Not quite sure there's an easy or gentle way of letting little Susie know that her cool little science experiment was responsible for 3 million lives lost. Good luck with that.
You seriously think the military is gonna tell little Susie about what she was doing? It'll get buried as 'national security' so fast, little Susie won't have time to catch the bus home.
Not necessarily, if you make less things illegal, by definition, crime goes down. We could lower our crime rate incredibly simply by ending the failed drug war. Unfortunately we have allowed prisons to become a private enterprise who lobby hard to keep business booming.
Of course we did. Where else is there a ready supply of dirt cheap labor inside the US? They can't unionise or go on strike, OSHA doesn't go 'inside', and the private prisons charge them room and board just like the old West Virginia coal towns used to do with their miners. It's modern, high-tech serfdom. And since there's zero attempt at rehabilitating a convict until they're dumped in the care of their underfunded overworked parole officers, they practically guarantee recidivism, especially with today's job climate in the States with background checks and credit checks a necessity for employment. I for one would love to see the repeat offender rates of half a dozen random European countries compared to the US. I'm willing to bet the US reincarcerates at least 50% more than anyone on the planet.
The US military budget exceeds the rest of the world's combined military budget by $200 billion. Our military budget represents about 43% of world military spending. We spend 586% more than China, which is second place (our budget is about $700 billion, theirs is about $120 billion). The only country that spends more as a percentage of GDP is Saudia Arabia (10.4%) and their GDP is considerably smaller than the US.
It costs big bucks to be the 'World Police'. Strange thing is, I can't remember anyone (other than Kuwait, when they bent over for Saddam) asking us to do the job.
Must be cause there's big bucks in military spending.
Almost reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_b Team B, the CIA's infiltration by Neocon nutjobs to scaremonger themselves back into power. Looking at the roster, it's almost a Who's Who of Neocon wannabe-powerbrokers who later showed up in Dubya's administration and their mentors.
Lovely reading in the official Team B report, thoughtfully provided in PDF format at the end of that page.
I found out about Team B, btw, through a BBC documentary, 'The Politics of Fear', findable on Youtube or at your friendly neighborhood video pirate.
Why the US wants it globally accepted is obvious, we don't really manufacturer what we used to. A significant portion of our economy has moved to a creating ideas, instead of things, then selling those ideas at massively inflated prices.
What ideas? Most of the good ones are already created. Every Hollyweird movie these days is either a sequel or a remake or a rehash of something they made money on before. And it's awfully hard to be creative when you're working 60+ hours a week to make the payments on that variable rate mortgage you got talked into while trying to make the insurance payments and pay for the kids' schooling. God help you if you get sick in the US, you'll be bankrupt in months.
If somebody does come up with something original, laws like this will make sure it's properly stolen by our corporate overlords where it will be milked beyond its lifetime to keep corporate profits properly high.
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Yes, they can. And no matter how much you try to prove you can't, they can still charge you for noncompliance to their orders. It's called contempt of court, and the judge can make you rot in a cell until you do comply. No jury, no bail, no nothing.
Yup, they'll listen alright. Then they'll cut the airlines another bailout check. Problem solved.
Dude, that is Palpatine.
Looks like he's had some work done. He looks tanned, rested, and ready. Let's make him our next Fearful Leader.
Main reason we're in this mess is 4,000 people died in 1 day and the media whipped the public into 'doing something' cause those terrorrorrorrists were comin for the rest of us next. It was big, it was visible, it was showy, and the media made a ton of money cause everybody was glued to their seats waiting for the other shoe to drop. Reminds me about all the scare FUD they spread about 'dirty bombs' (Hint: dirty bombs are a waste of time. For them to be truly effective, they'd have to cast your feet into cement and keep you there 4 or 5 years before the radiation had a chance to kill you. Oh, and it can't rain anytime in those 4 or 5 years).
How do you stop a takeover? While they could have told the airplane manufacturers to redesign the planes so that cockpits cannot be physically entered from the fuselage, they didn't. Last time I flew, about 4 years ago, from Vegas to Cleveland, the cockpit door wasn't closed until after takeoff. Now, hijacking's been a known problem for decades, hell, they used to hijack American planes to Cuba almost on a daily basis, but nobody ever seriously considered giving the cockpit its own outside hatch and putting a hardened steel bulkhead between it and the passenger area. Add in some teargas/sleep gas cannisters fireable only from the cockpit, and problem solved. Just make sure the flight attendants know if somebody pulls a weapon back there, they're on their own. They could have done this in the 70's. They didn't. Who do we sue?
More like a Master's degree in underwater basketweaving.
Relax, it's an election year. Susan is just trying to act like she really gives a shit to her constituents. They slamdunk this one through, it's damned good sound bytes on their re-election campaign ads: "We thought of the children!!" On Nov 7th, nobody will give a fuck anymore and this will just go away to be resurrected in 2014.
They break it up into little pieces Manhattan Project style and bury it under a zillion tons of paperwork, even the project bosses won't be able to figure out what's going on.
They're required to give equal access to polis. Doesn't mean any ads they run are for free. Parties are supposed to buy airtime just like everybody else.
They'll just write it off on their taxes as 'cost of doing business' and save enough to more than cover it, making the stockholders happy.
After the damage was done.
Among other things, it shows an explaination for the mass lossage. The mass might be feeding the smaller star or the white dwarf.
Problem is, what comes from Vega are Vegans. If they invade, no more leather, no more steaks. We'll be reduced to eating vegetables and tofu forever and ever and ever, amen
Course, the upside is, we'll produce plenty of methane, so it might help with the energy crunch, though I kinda doubt it'll be comfortable walking around with a gas pipe up my ass. Maybe that's why the aliens are so into anal probing...
GPS. Hey, they spent all that money putting those satellites in orbit for a reason ya know.
Yeah, that'd be ample reason to invade them. Gotta be a bigtime market there for cheap throwaway cell phones, overpriced coffee and all the rest of the 'benefits' of 'civilisation'. They find any oil under Pyongyang yet?
The only 'artistry' the media companies are interested in is the artistry needed to hide profits from the artists themselves. You don't really think all that money goes to rock stars, do you?
I got the chance to look over a 'standard starup contract' for a new band a few years back. Yeah, they got a $30,000 advance, on 3 albums. The fine print said, they had to use the label's recording studio at the usual rate, plus the label's engineers & techs, also at the usual rate. The label wiould supply the producer, paid for by the band at the producer's usual rate. Advertising and promotion would be provided by the label and paid for by the band at the label's usual rate. And so on and so forth. All of this was supposed to come out of the band's share of the profits before they got paid a dime. Oh, they also had to pay back that $30,000 advance before they saw any money. And they only got a small percentage of the profits.
I remember a commercial for a tax service that aired about 3 years ago where one guy played a musician and said "I made 250,000 last year. If I do that good this year, I might break even!'.
Me, I'm hoping the Falcon Heavy gets certified real soon. It might be the only non-Chinese Moon-capable rocket around.
You seriously think the military is gonna tell little Susie about what she was doing? It'll get buried as 'national security' so fast, little Susie won't have time to catch the bus home.
First off, these kids won't be wearing the uniform. Second off, the US has refused to acknowledge the existance of that treaty and ruling.
Of course we did. Where else is there a ready supply of dirt cheap labor inside the US? They can't unionise or go on strike, OSHA doesn't go 'inside', and the private prisons charge them room and board just like the old West Virginia coal towns used to do with their miners. It's modern, high-tech serfdom. And since there's zero attempt at rehabilitating a convict until they're dumped in the care of their underfunded overworked parole officers, they practically guarantee recidivism, especially with today's job climate in the States with background checks and credit checks a necessity for employment. I for one would love to see the repeat offender rates of half a dozen random European countries compared to the US. I'm willing to bet the US reincarcerates at least 50% more than anyone on the planet.
It costs big bucks to be the 'World Police'. Strange thing is, I can't remember anyone (other than Kuwait, when they bent over for Saddam) asking us to do the job.
Must be cause there's big bucks in military spending.
Almost reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_b Team B, the CIA's infiltration by Neocon nutjobs to scaremonger themselves back into power. Looking at the roster, it's almost a Who's Who of Neocon wannabe-powerbrokers who later showed up in Dubya's administration and their mentors.
Lovely reading in the official Team B report, thoughtfully provided in PDF format at the end of that page.
I found out about Team B, btw, through a BBC documentary, 'The Politics of Fear', findable on Youtube or at your friendly neighborhood video pirate.
No, TSA is just justifying its budget. Nothing to see, move along, move along.
Breaking your phone's screen is about the only thing that's legal. It forces you to buy another phone.
What ideas? Most of the good ones are already created. Every Hollyweird movie these days is either a sequel or a remake or a rehash of something they made money on before. And it's awfully hard to be creative when you're working 60+ hours a week to make the payments on that variable rate mortgage you got talked into while trying to make the insurance payments and pay for the kids' schooling. God help you if you get sick in the US, you'll be bankrupt in months.
If somebody does come up with something original, laws like this will make sure it's properly stolen by our corporate overlords where it will be milked beyond its lifetime to keep corporate profits properly high.
Americans don't look at history pre-Reagan anymore. What little they see is sanitised to make sure the Party line is upheld.